Science & Culture

San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (St. Juan Diego “Beloved Talking Eagle”) was beatified on May 6, 1990 and canonized on July 31, 2002. The modern process began in January 1984 with the naming of the first postulator. Interest had been renewed with the 500th anniversary of Juan Diego's traditional year of birth in 1474.

The most important modern official document regarding the historical arguments about Juan Diego was commissioned by the Vatican's  the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (acting in concert with the Archdiocese of Mexico) to a special Historical Commission headed by the Mexican ecclesiastical historians Fidel González, Eduardo Chávez Sánchez and José Guerrero. The results of the review were presented to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on October 28, 1998 which unanimously approved them. In the following year, the fruit of the Commission's work was published in a book:

González Fernández, Fidel, Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, and José Luis Guerrero Rosado, El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego, México City: Ediciones Porrúa, 1999, 4th edn. 2001.

The final postulator also wrote a detailed summary of the modern beatification/canonization process for Saint Juan Diego:

Chávez Sánchez, Eduardo (November 12, 2001), San Juan Diego: Camino a la canonizacíon, online article.

Two members of the Saint Francis and the Americas team at Arizona State University met the final postulator Eduardo Chávez Sánchez on the occasion of the 2009 Our Lady of Guadalupe Prayer Progam in Phoenix, Arizona, attended by over 20,000 individuals. A photograph of Msgr. Eduardo Chávez and Dr. Gary Francisco Keller at that event follows.